


fatum nos iunget

by Chameleani



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: AU, F/M, New Dream Week 2021 (Disney), angst?? possibly, but nobody dies in this, mentions of Eugene's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29518596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chameleani/pseuds/Chameleani
Summary: fate will unite usOr; five things that never happened to Rapunzel and Eugene.
Relationships: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	fatum nos iunget

  
I. 

An uneasy feeling rises in the princess' chest as she quietly pads past the cells. The chill of the dungeon floor is icy on her bare feet; it's an unusual sensation-- she never goes without shoes. 

She shouldn't be down here. She's never defied her father's commands before, but something deep in her chest pushes her onward. In fact, the prisoner she's looking for is one she's specifically under strict orders to be kept far away from. 

It's not her fault the guards suck. 

One week ago, he tried to steal her crown. Some sort of group heist... as it turns out, he miscalculated someway down the line and got himself caught. There's something about him she just can't shake, though. Maybe it's guilt. She does feel responsible for his death sentence, but ever since her mother died giving birth to her, her father's been fiercely protective. He was made out to be this huge threat to her, and yet when she saw him struggling in chains outside the window of the most secure room in the castle, he seemed painfully ordinary. And familiar. Painfully familiar, despite the fact that they've never met. 

Rapunzel moves her long, brown hair over to one shoulder. She lifts the lantern above her head, creeping down past the sleeping inmates as she reaches his cell at the end. 

He turns his head to look at her when the light floods his darkened cell. There's a scar running down his cheek. In the flickering light of her lantern she notices that he's sort of beautiful, with soft, amber-colored eyes set in a rough countenance. He doesn't look threatening at all. "Can I help you?"

"Oh-- um." She clears her throat. "Hello."

He quirks an eyebrow. " _Princess_. Why are you here?" 

Rapunzel checks the piece of paper in her pocket, the one she took from her father's study. "Flynn... Rider. That's your name?"

Flynn rattles the chains on his wrists. "More or less."

"Weird question," she says, as she sets the lantern down on a crate and sits beside it. "Have we met?"

After a long pause, she swears that she hears him laugh. 

"No, we haven't." He pauses again as he turns to face the wall, scowl settling back into his features. "Is this some kind of trap?"

"No! No, it's not. I just... felt like I had to talk to you. Like fate, or something. Do you know anything about that?"

He deadpans, facing the wall for a moment more before he turns within his shackles to face her body with his. "I don't believe in fate. Or luck, or soulmates, or any of that mess. What I do know, is that I'm going to be executed tomorrow. Because of you."

"Well, not _directly_ because of me." Rapunzel nervously wrings her hands. "You made the decision to steal the crown. Which, by the way, I don't think that shouldn't be punishable by death."

"But threatening the princess is, apparently."

"You didn't threaten me."

He gestures to his current situation with a dismissive hand (or, rather, hands, considering as they're currently bound together). 

Rapunzel doesn't argue, her personal security in the kingdom has been intense for her entire life. Her father declared the sentence, anyway, and he's always right. Ever since she was a little girl she's always followed his guidance-- after all, one day she'll replace him. It's her duty to do everything exactly right, exactly the way it should be, exactly the way it's been done. 

And thieves belong in prison. And fate isn't real. 

"Sorry to bother you, Flynn Rider. And, uh... sorry in general."

The thief doesn't reply.   
  


* * *

II. 

"Ah, it appears I've stumbled upon the sun princess."

Rapunzel sighs, feeling her shoulders slump. She backs away from the desk she's working at and heads toward the entrance, pasting on a smile. The guards suck, sometimes. They should really start insisting people knock. Or, you know, announce when they arrive after a year's long journey. "And, _of course_ , the dark prince. To what do I owe the pleasure, Horace?"

"Such a cold greeting, considering the long trip I just took to come see you." He leans against the doorframe, admiring the architecture of the west-wing library where she was just working on her studies. "I see you've still got the magic hair. That hasn't gone away, yet?"

She hums, no stranger to his signature teasing. "Are _you_ still keeping a rock in a cage?"

The prince pushes himself off the doorframe and takes a half-step closer. "Touché, Sunshine. Listen, no time for witty banter, I have news." He unfolds a torn piece of scroll from his pocket, passing it over the space between them. "I think this sundrop-moonstone stuff is a bigger deal than our fathers think. My dad won't hear it, though, and neither will yours. They think the solution to everything is avoiding it until it's a big enough deal to not avoid it anymore. Well, I'll be honest with you, Sunshine, I'm starting to get restless."

Rapunzel hands the scrap back to him. "I can't read this, Horace."

"Neither can I. But I think it has something to do with your hair. And the, uh, rock problem." 

He almost looks like he's finally going to be serious about something. She's known him since they were kids-- their kingdoms have been in correspondence since Rapunzel was born with the sundrop's power. The alliance between the kingdoms and her frequent visits to the moonstone have kept the issue from causing damage to the kingdom, but judging by the black rocks spreading through Old Corona like wildfire, it's beginning to become a problem with no solution. 

She knows how this story goes. Their fathers seem to think the solution is purely political, just like everything else. Their solution? Marriage when she's of age--and the insistence that a union of the kingdoms would be enough to unify the ancient entities. 

But Horace is an arrogant jerk, and if her research tells her anything, this is a lot more work than simply connecting two faraway kingdoms with a marital union. If he has a solution now, well, Rapunzel has no qualms with skipping that plan. 

"So? What do you suggest we do with this? We can't read it, and it's only part of the whole thing." 

There's that awful smile, mischievous and playful as he folds the parchment back into his pocket. "Find the rest, of course. Up for an adventure, Princess?"

* * *

III. 

Now that the horse is gone, he finally has a chance to breathe. Flynn draws air in and out until his heart is beating steady again and when he looks up, he's blown away by the view for the second time that day. 

"Wow."

Before him stands a tower of white bricks, at least a hundred feet high, with overgrown ivy cascading down the exterior. It looks like the perfect place to hide and think of a new plan.

There's one problem: Flynn notices the entrance is unusually clear of the ivy that climbs the rest of the tower. It's pretty obvious that someone must live here. 

"Yeah, no," he says to himself, searching for a way out of the clearing. "I'm not going to take that chance."

* * *

IV.

"You're alive."

He feels like he's floating. Well, not really, he's actually still chained to the wall, but he hasn't felt this alive in a while. Not-dying does that to you, he supposes. 

She's rambling now, gripping his free hand and whispering about how she's so glad she doesn't have to be alone anymore. He brings her back down to Earth with another kiss. 

"Hey, Blondie, focus for a minute with me." He rattles the shackles on his left wrist. "How about we come up with a game plan, first?"

Rapunzel nods, standing up to go retrieve the key. On her way back, though, she stops dead in her tracks. Her gaze turns catatonic as the events of the day wash over her. She stares at the copper-colored key in her hand. "I killed my mother."

"Rapunzel..."

"I... she... she was my mother.."

Eugene tugs at the chains on his wrist again, the desperate feeling to get to her almost parallel to the one coursing through his veins hardly a half an hour earlier. "Technically, no, you didn't."

She reaches behind herself instinctively to grab at hair, but there's nothing left to grab. Rapunzel sits down on her knees in the center of the room. The frog chitters, crawls over toward her, and tucks his head against her leg. 

"Eugene, I let her die."

He tugs again, uselessly, at the chains. "She was a bad person. And not the redeemable kind. She chained you up, she wanted to use you, Rapunzel, it's okay." 

Rapunzel seems to reluctantly agree, or at least, she doesn't mention if she doesn't. She quietly shuffles over towards him and unlocks the shackle around his wrist. 

Once he's been freed, he opens up his arm to her. She curls into his side, buries her face into his vest, and rests her small hand over the invisible gash in his side. 

"Where to now?" He asks, not daring to raise his voice above a low whisper. He has no parents, and now, neither does she. Once they leave this place they'll have no shelter aside from his one room shack near Vardaros, and no food aside from whatever they take from here on the way out. 

Most of that doesn't matter, though. She's free now, and he gets to experience the world once again with her. 

She moves her head, just enough to look at him. Her lips slowly spread into that smile, the one that's starting to make his heart melt, and he listens when she tells him, "The world."

* * *

V. 

He's exhausted and more than upset that he even bothered to come, but he isn't going to leave without talking to her first. It seems impossible to pull her away, though, the center of attention from the moment she reluctantly locked lips with _that_ stuck-up, stuffy duke. Eugene runs a hand over his face, finding his way over to sit with the pub thugs. 

"Don't feel down, big guy." Hook Hand slaps him on the back with his non-hook hand. "Sure, the love of your life just got married to somebody who isn't you, but that's no big deal. You did fine without her before, right?"

Not really. He _got by_ without her; he never truly felt alive until he met her. She made him a better person, she saw the good in him when nobody would. And now he's lost her, forever. 

Selfishly, he wishes she never discovered that she was the lost Princess. 

"Eugene," he hears her voice, sad and sweet, from behind him. His heart starts beating faster. 

"Hey, Rapunzel." Spinning around, he turns on the charm. Eugene Fitzherbert is hopelessly in love, heartbroken, defeated. Flynn Rider, well, he didn't even think about those kinds of things. "You look great."

She doesn't buy it. She sees right through him, right through to the poor orphan tossed aside for the second time in his life. She jerks her head to the side to indicate they should go somewhere more private. "Let's talk." 

They slip behind the venue unnoticed. After a moment of just standing there, tense confusion between them, Rapunzel throws her arms around him and captures his lips in a kiss. 

After a long moment, he pulls away. "Rapunzel." There's a hundred things he could ask her in that moment, but none of the words come together. All he can manage is a pitiful, "Why?"

"Eugene, I didn't have a choice." Her fingers sift through his hair. "My dad was sick, he can't negotiate threats of war. They needed an heir /and/ a political union. And now they have me."

For the first time since she nervously informed him of the engagement, his selfish anger dissipates. Poor Rapunzel, she's only just left captivity looking for adventure and was immediately thrown into a stranger's arms and a job she doesn't want. He takes a step closer to her, pulling her back against his chest as she weeps. 

He doesn't find words so he doesn't bother looking, instead, he keeps his lips shut and pressed against her hair for the last time. 

"What are we gonna do, Eugene?"

Well, he's not going to lie to her. He just got pardoned for his crimes upon bringing the princess home and the ill-fated king was probably not going to do him any more favors. He places his hands squarely on her shoulders and lets himself get lost in her big, fearful, gorgeous green eyes. "I think this is goodbye, Rapunzel."

This is where he leaves her. The worst part is, he has nobody to fall back on. Not even Flynn Rider, who died for good the day she brought Eugene back to life. 

She won't even look at him. "Will I ever see you again?"

He sighs. The short answer was no, not like this. Rapunzel was too honest, too caring, to be unfaithful to her husband or her kingdom. But he'll tell her now that he'll be there, amongst the crowd, every time she addresses her subjects. He'll be there, cheering on the greatest queen Corona has ever had, as she takes every step closer to learning how to be one. 

Part of him expected this, anyway. He wasn't a prince, and he certainly wasn't fit to become one. 

"I love you," she whispers. It would hurt more if he even had time to realize it was the first time she had. And though it only makes things harder, even though the words bring tears to his eyes and threatens to bring sobs to his chest he says it back. And with that, they separate. No looking back, now. 

Their adventure is over before it began. 

**Author's Note:**

> ahhh first tangled fic!! I don't love this one but I really wanted to get something in for new dream week. I hope you liked it, feel free to leave a comment or kudos if you did <333 I'm not super active rn but if you wanna hang out I'm Chameleani over on tumblr


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